


If He Be Worthy

by talefeathers



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 14:25:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/pseuds/talefeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a moment Thor remained where he was, flat on his back in a pile of marshy mud. This was the second time Loki had tried to kill him. His little brother, once a boy who'd idolized him. Once his best friend.  Now an insane, twisted, shattered shell of a man who had convinced himself that --</p>
<p>Thor gritted his teeth.  <i>I dropped him.  He thinks I dropped him.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	If He Be Worthy

**Author's Note:**

> The second time I went to see _Avengers_ this just kinda happened in my brain, so then I wrote it on the car ride home from school last year. The point of view shifts in the middle in a way that I'm not sure I like (honestly I'm not sure it makes much sense), but that's how it happened at the time and I haven't felt up to rewriting it, so I guess it's just gonna have to stay that way for now. Enjoy!

For a moment Thor remained where he was, flat on his back in a pile of marshy mud. This was the second time Loki had tried to kill him. His little brother, once a boy who'd idolized him. Once his best friend. Now an insane, twisted, shattered shell of a man who had convinced himself that -- 

Thor gritted his teeth. _I dropped him. He thinks I dropped him._

The last thing he wanted to do was stand and face that fact, but there was nothing else to do. He owed it to this planet to stand. He owed it to the brother he'd wronged.

He dragged himself to his feet and began to search for Mjölnir. He knew that he could just lift his hand and call it to him, but he thought the walk would do him good. He needed to breathe, to think, to just take a few minutes to let everything that was happening in this strange realm catch up with him. And there was another reason, a deeper reason, lurking in his heart though he refused to fully acknowledge it. Though he would never admit it, he was afraid that it would happen again. That Mjölnir would see what Thor had done to his brother and stay rooted in Earth's soil as it had when he had been banished. In spite of these misgivings, however, he made himself trudge on, scanning the horizon for that telltale glint.

He finally came upon the hammer quite a distance away, in a field of yellow flowers that exactly contrasted his mood. He could feel the thrum of its power in his hand, begging him to pick it up, but he hesitated, instead digging his fingernails into his palms.

---

"Loki, _no!"_

The younger man's eyes had flattened, the hope and desperation fleeing in favor of emptiness. Thor reached for him, but Odin could see the muscles in Loki's hand slackening already. With those miserable eyes fixed on Odin, Loki let go of the Allfather's scepter and plummeted off the edge of the Rainbow Bridge.

_"NO!"_ Thor bellowed, taking the wound Loki's eyes had cut into their father's heart and stretching it even wider.

"No," Odin echoed, watching the boy he always had and always would consider his son disappear into the abyss.

He pulled Thor up onto the bridge, grunting with effort; his elder son was now mostly dead weight in his shock and grief. He gently pulled his scepter from the god of thunder's grasp and placed it beside him before tightly grasping his son's shoulders.

"Thor."

Thor was kneeling before him, shaking with quiet sobs, staring at his limp hands with a species of horror. Odin swallowed the painful lump that rose in his throat.

_"Thor._ Thor _look at me."_

There was a horrible pause in which Thor only continued to stare disbelievingly at his hands, letting his tears fall into them. Then, just as Odin was about to accept that there would be no getting through to him now, Thor took a deep breath, straightened his mouth into a hard line, and lifted his swimming blue eyes to meet his father's single good one. Odin's gaze held the thunderer's as firmly as his hands held his shoulders.

"This is not your fault. Do you hear me? There is nothing you could have done. Loki - " Odin paused when his voice failed him, closing his eye and regaining his composure before locking Thor back into his sight. "Your brother's death is upon my hands and no one else's. _Do you understand?"_

But while Thor nodded, Odin saw that the guilt had already begun to take root. There was a horrible weight now behind those eyes that had so lately been foolish and blazing. Upon realizing this Odin allowed his own tears to fall.

"I am sorry, my son."

As though that sentence had broken the last string holding Thor's grief inside of him, he was seized by a new wave of sobs. He reached for his father with a helplessness that had been rare even when he'd been a boy. Odin pulled his only remaining son into a tight hug, grieving both Loki's death and the knowledge that Thor would never forgive himself for it.

---

Thor had never felt less worthy. Of his family, of his power, of anything. He'd shoved Loki into his shadow until the trickster had lashed out in vengeance against this constant, albeit unintentional, oppression, taking it out on these innocent mortals, many of them (he felt an uncomfortable twinge in his heart as he remembered what had happened to Agent Coulson) his friends. And what had Thor done? So far he'd only failed, and failed repeatedly. Failed as a king, as a protector, and, above all, as a brother. The hammer should not beckon to him as it did now; he should not feel its lightning tingling through his hand up to his shoulder, but he did. And he knew why.

He bent and picked up Mjölnir, feeling its perfect balance in his hand and half-hating it. It was time to end what he had started. It was time to pay for his mistakes, one way or another.

It was time for one final appeal to what was left of Loki.


End file.
